>FMAJ: Perhaps but the Intelligent Design filters cannot exclude natural
selection
as an intelligent designer so perhaps intelligence as used by you is
different from the intelligence as used by the ID movement?
DNAunion: I will not address Welsberry's claim that Demski's filter allows
RM & NS to act as an intelligent designer: I think Demski himself should
address the merit of that. But I will comment on another point you brought
up.
First, I think the ID movement is not a single unified movement, just as
evolution is not a single unified movement (what I mean by that is that even
though all evolutionists agree that evolution occurs, they disagree about the
rate, the importance of different mechanisms, the proper ancestors of
different extant animals, etc.).
I think many in the ID movement would accept what I refer to as intelligence,
even though I do not define the term. For instance, I consider a computer
program that can not only play chess legally (that is pretty simple), but can
play chess WELL to be have "some form of intelligence". A rock cannot play
chess well, no matter what you do to it; a shoe cannot play chess well no
matter how you press it, throw it, twirl it, or what have you; a hurricane
cannot play chess well (or even legally); a cat, a dog, or even a dolphin or
chimpanzee cannot play chess well, again, no matter how much you attempt to
teach them. But a "hunk of silicon" can play better than the greatest chess
player that ever lived (beating world champion Gary Kasparov - the highest
rated chess player ever, even higher than the legendary Bobby Fischer).
I have a more-complete post on this that I could post here if anyone is
interested.
However, other IDists reject such a notion stating that such systems are NOT
intelligent.
In addition, I disagree with Dawkins that things like spider webs are not
designed or intelligently produced in any manner whatsoever. In "Climbing
Mount Improbable", Dawkins takes up about 4 or 5 pages explaining all the
details and intricacies that go into a spider's efforts to construct a web -
and the logic that is needed (before step X can be done, the spider must -
and does - first do step W or else....). To me, if some intricate, detailed,
and exacting process must be carried out to produce something, then it is not
generated purely-natural: it is either designed or intelligently created or
both. The laws of physics and chemistry alone do not produce a spider web:
the input of the spider is also needed.
But again, I am sure that some or many IDists would reject my views on this
also, or at least modify them.
One of my points is that ID is not a single unified movement as some suggest
(and also, relatedly, ID is not a single unified "religious fundy" and/or
"Creationist" movement, no more than evolution is a single unified atheistic
movement).
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